


The Truth about Eros

by Aisalynn



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, F/M, Fix-It, M/M, Misuse of Plato, Pining, Slow Burn, Soulmates, and Greek mythology in general probably, mentions of James/Miranda/Thomas, not exactly pain sharing more like sense sharing?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:33:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27941576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aisalynn/pseuds/Aisalynn
Summary: Silver understood one thing very well.Being Fated did not mean you were safe.It did not mean you were loved.
Relationships: Captain Flint | James McGraw/John Silver, Captain Flint | James McGraw/Thomas Hamilton, Madi/John Silver
Comments: 38
Kudos: 121





	1. he who love touches not walks in darkness

For almost as long as he could remember, Silver could taste salt. 

He didn’t exactly know when it started, but he had a distinct memory of sitting at the table, legs so short he couldn’t touch the ground and complaining that the food tasted bad. He earned a smack across the head for that comment, and was told he should be grateful to have any food at all, which wasn’t an uncommon statement in his household. 

It came and went, the salt. Sometimes staying for weeks, months, on end, stinging his lips with cracks that weren’t there and filling his nose with the scent of it as a cold burst of air would brush against his face, harsh and briny. 

He was nearly 400 kilometers from the sea. 

_Fated._

That’s what they called it. 

His mother smiled at him, brushing back the curls from his face. She had been Fated, she told him. To the father he had only heard spoken of a handful of times in his short life. And it was a wonderful thing she said. _Wonderful_ , she whispered. There were tears in her eyes. 

It didn’t seem so wonderful to Silver. Being Fated meant shivering from the cold in the sweltering summer heat. It meant phantom burns on the palms of his hands, waking abruptly to the sounds of footsteps above him that no one else could hear, catching a shimmer of light in the corner of his eye only for it to disappear when he turned to look. 

Being Fated, Silver soon realized, meant that his life was never truly just his own. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


He hadn’t been on the crew of the _Walrus_ long before he heard a few of the men muttering about the captain. Fated to a witch, they whispered. And on the darkest of nights, when there were no stars or moon to illuminate the water, the mysterious couple would go down to the shore where he would kneel in the waves and she would anoint him with blood. The force of their bond and her dark magic made Flint invincible, as if the blood that spilled from him in battle did not come from his own veins but instead from the contents of the bowl she had poured over him. 

Some muttered that it was why their luck had seemed to turn sour, that only misfortune would come from following a man stained with blood like that. Others said they hoped he had been freshly anointed back in Nassau, and that it would mean they would soon return victorious, their ship heavy from the weight of Spanish gold.

Either way it was a good story, but Silver paid it no mind beyond the entertainment it provided. 

The thought of Flint being Fated lingered with him though. He couldn’t help but wonder, what sort of woman would be Fated to a man like Flint, what she experienced. Did she feel a red hot streak of pain as he split his knuckles on Singleton’s teeth? Did her hand curl around the handle of an invisible knife that night Flint grabbed him at the wrecks?

What does he experience? He thought idly as he watched Flint loom above them from the quarterdeck, expression pensive as he stared at the horizon, hands clasped firmly behind his back. He certainly didn’t show any outward signs of being bombarded by the senses of another person. But then, their dear captain didn’t seem to show outward signs of anything, other than pure, bullheaded determination. 

As if sensing Silver’s study of him, Flint’s gaze suddenly flicked down to Silver. Well and truly caught, Silver raised his hand in a small wave, an ingratiating smile finding its way to his lips. In response, Flint’s expression tightened so much that Silver’s own facial muscles ached in sympathy. Flint turned from, stalking across the quarterdeck so he could mutter something to Gates, and Silver’s breath released in a huff once those eyes were off of him.

Seems like their chances of becoming friends by the time they reached the goal were slim after all. 

Silver also turned away, determined to enjoy the small break in his duties before he was forced back down to the galley to peel more of those damn potatoes. He braced his forearms against the side of the ship and titled his face up to feel the sun. He licked his lips, and tasted salt. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


When he was twelve he had made a habit of lingering outside an inn a few blocks from where he lived. The owner would sometimes throw him an odd job now and then—running to the butcher to secure meat for the evening’s stew, or delivering a message for a guest upstairs. Each task paid a small coin and there were days when that measly amount would make a difference in whether he would eat or not. 

The owner’s wife seemed young to help run an inn to Silver, not much older than him, but it was well known that they were Fated and had found each other young, inheriting the inn from his father. When her husband wasn’t around she sometimes stepped outside of the inn to the alley where he was loitering, a bowl from yesterday’s stew or a slice of pie in her hand. She would sit with him as he ate, asking him quiet questions about his life that he would avoid answering when he could, outright lie when he couldn’t. 

He liked the way her curly hair slipped from the bun at the base of her neck, the color of it, almost red when it was caught in the sun. He liked the way she never called him on his lies, even the terrible ones. She would just let him expand on his stories, her gentle voice making interested comments at the right moments, her smile kind in a way that hadn’t been turned in his direction since his mother. 

When her husband was around so were the bruises, dark under her eyes and vivid against her cheekbones. 

He wondered, sometimes, why no one tried to stop it from happening. But then after all, who would argue with Fate? 

Silver stopped in the middle of one of his stories once, eyes caught on where her skin split into an angry line on her bottom lip. He asked, didn’t it hurt him too? Wasn’t that what happened? 

She had smiled softly, the corner of her lips pulling on the still healing cut. It didn’t work like that, she told him. You didn’t share everything, and you didn’t get to pick and choose what the other person experienced. 

He thought about when hunger gnawed within him so bad it kept him up at night. He thought about the ache in his feet from walking the city streets all day long searching for food, for money, for anything to make his life better, if only temporarily. He wondered how much his Fated experienced, what they thought of the brief glimpses of his miserable life. Then he studied her tired face, the lurid bruise that blemished her pale skin, and had to ask.

Would you make him feel it, if you could choose?

She didn’t smile sadly at him then, but shook her head, her expression tight and unhappy. You don’t understand, she had said. You’re too young. 

But Silver understood one thing very well. 

Being Fated did not mean you were safe. 

It did not mean you were loved. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


Silver didn’t feel anything when Singleton’s sword sliced across Flint’s chest. He didn’t feel anything when the bullet pierced his shoulder. There was no phantom pain in his hands from Flint killing a man with his fists, no sudden sharp heat as rough metal pierced skin and flesh. 

But as the captain of the _Walrus_ sank into the depths of the Caribbean sea, Silver felt his own lungs fill with water. 

He gasped, one hand pressed to his chest, panting against the pain, eyes locked on the spot in the water where Flint had disappeared. 

_Oh._

Realization rushed into him all at once, forcing its way into his consciousness much like the water currently forcing itself into the lungs of Silver’s Fated, drowning in the sea below him.

He wasn’t thinking when he dove in after him.

He wasn’t thinking when he pushed himself further and further down into the water, when his fingers finally grasped Flint’s coat, the burn in his lungs now doubled by his own desperation for air. Wasn’t thinking when he dragged Flint out of the water and onto the sand. He had no time, and no thought to spare before he realized that Flint wasn’t breathing, and he pressed his mouth to Flint’s slack lips and breathed for him, dizzy from the sensation of air both leaving and filling his lungs at the same time.

By the time Flint was coughing and hacking into the sand beside him and Silver was able to fling himself down on his back and just _breathe_ for a moment, he had only one thought at the forefront of his mind.

 _Oh shit_.

  
  


* * *

  
  


You were destined to meet your Fated. 

That’s what everyone said anyway. There was no hard proof for it, no law written by an undeniable god, nothing but anecdotes passed down from generation to generation. It was just common knowledge that was shared from person to person: one way or another, whether you were lucky enough to build a life with them, or an unfortunate one who just bumps into them on a busy street, if you are blessed enough to be one of those who had their life bound to another’s, you were destined to meet them someday. 

Maybe that is what drove Silver to the sea. Despite his dislike of it. Despite his complete lack of desire to ever meet his Fated and have his life so completely tied to someone else’s against his will. 

Maybe it was Fate that made him desperate, put him in a situation where he was running, no money and no friends, the law at his back and at the edge of the water—nowhere to go but across it. He tried to blend into the mass of people at the busy docks, eyes scanning the crowd for danger and opportunity and stumbled into his only escape—a rickety table manned by a red face man with a boisterous voice shoving a flyer in the face of every well bodied man passing by. 

War. 

The navy needed every fit man they could get. 

The pay was a pittance. But it came with free room and board while on the ship, and even better, they didn’t much care about who you were or where you came from. 

Silver wasted no time. No sooner had the false name tripped from his lips and landed on his volunteer papers in wet, blotchy ink, than he was stepping off the dock and into a launch, being carried away from the shore. 

Fate. Silver didn’t want to believe in it. He all out denied what his own body told him since the first time he licked his lips and tasted brine, and yet that first night in his hammock aboard the ship he was able to rest in a way he hadn’t since he was a child, the strangely familiar rocking of the ocean lulling him in to a deep and dreamless sleep. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


“Not quite what you expected, huh?”

Silver was startled from his observation of Flint, and abruptly turned, feeling caught out. “I’m sorry?”

Billy nodded at the quarterdeck. “Mrs. Barlow. She’s not what any of us expected, is she?”

“Oh,” Silver let out a small breath, relieved, and looked back up. Mrs. Barlow was perched on a chair behind Flint, talking quietly with the Ashe girl. Not what he expected, indeed. Her hair was pulled up in a simple knot, her dress was not of a particularly better quality than the other women living on plantations and farms outside of Nassau that Silver has seen, and yet still there was an air of gentility she couldn’t hide. How she held herself, perhaps—posture perfectly straight, shoulders back. Or maybe her hands, the way she held a tea cup lightly, with only fingertips against the ceramic. Silver watched as she reached out to Flint, those same fingertips lightly brushing his wrist to catch his attention.

“No,” Silver agreed. “She isn’t.” He forced himself to break his study of the pair and looked back at Billy, who was leaning against the rail as he too watched them, a contemplative frown curling at the edges of his lips. “Not exactly the bloodthirsty witch all the men were talking about, is she?” 

Billy caught Silver’s grin and returned it, relaxing his tense expression. “I guess not. Still don’t know what to make of her. Or Flint for that matter. Crew figures they have to be Fated for those two to have matched up.”

Silver hummed, turning his back on the trio above them and leaning instead against the railing beside the other man. “I don’t know about that. The world has seen plenty of unlikely pairs without Fate getting involved. And sometimes I can’t help but wonder if Fate gets it wrong.” Silver shook out his right hand, as if with the motion he could shake off the feeling of invisible fingers circling his wrist. Beside him Billy gave him a sharp look, but Silver ignored it, choosing instead to stare quietly out at the horizon, at the faint line where blue sky met the endless, endless sea. 

“What about you?” He suddenly asked Billy. Partly to distract him from studying Silver any further, partly out of pure curiosity. He liked Billy. He seemed smarter than your average pirate, and with a decent sense of humor, when he wasn’t too busy brooding about their captain or England’s plans for Nassau. 

“Me? What about me?” 

Silver nodded at Billy’s right hand, where his thumb was rubbing at the first knuckle on his middle finger, over and over again. “Have you met yours yet?”

Billy looked down, surprised, and deliberately stilled his hands. “No. At least, I don’t think so. Doesn’t matter anyhow,” he dismissed.

Silver raised an eyebrow. “Doesn’t it?” 

The other man shrugged one shoulder. “Even if we did meet, I have no intention of spending my life with her. Wouldn’t work.”

Silver studied him. He didn’t seem distressed or even resigned at the statement. Just matter of fact, like he knew it with a certainty. “How can you be sure about that?” he asked him.

Billy was quiet a moment, his gaze trailing across the ship as he thought, lingering just for a second at the quarterdeck looming above their heads before moving on. “She likes to write,” he finally muttered. “I can feel the press of the quill, here.” He brushed his thumb against that spot on his finger once more. “She practices the piano, almost every day.” He crooked a small smile at Silver. “I can’t tell if she is any good, but I can feel the keys beneath my hands. Sometimes its replaced by a needle, or the feeling of soft fabric in my palms.” 

Silver sucked in a breath. “You think she’s a lady.” 

Billy’s eyes briefly met his and then looked away. “Doesn’t matter. No woman like that would accept being tied to a life like mine. Maybe before…” he trailed off.

“Before?” 

Billy shook his head, standing up and away from railing. “I’ve done too many terrible things in my life to want to burden someone else with them. That’s how I can be sure it wouldn’t work.” His tone was final, leaving no opening for Silver to push further.

Silver stepped away from the railing as well, prepared to once more descend below to help Randall prepare the evening meal. If they lingered anymore, Flint would certainly take notice. 

Before he could walk away though, Billy grabbed his shoulder. “What about you?” he repeated Silver’s own question back at him. 

Silver didn’t insult him by pretending to misunderstand.

“No,” he lied with a smile, deliberately bright and unbothered. He was careful to not even let the temptation to look to the quarterdeck cross his face. “I haven’t met them.”

  
  


* * *

  
  


At one point, sometime in his twenties Silver was hit with a sudden, hollow ache in his chest. His knees nearly buckled underneath him from the sensation. His breath came in sharp, struggling gasps and his throat suddenly felt raw and tight, as if a harsh, guttural cry had been ripped from it. The knuckles in his right hand burst into a sharp pain and he thought for sure for a moment that they were broken. 

It all faded, just as suddenly as it appeared. All accept the ache in his chest. That remained for weeks after. Sometimes even appearing months later, late at night when he had nothing to distract him, or he supposed, nothing to distract his Fated.

Now, as Silver dragged his consciousness from the edge of the drugged sleep he’d been put into, it took him a moment to recognize the feeling again. At first, he couldn’t separate that ache from the ache caused by his leg, the nausea that roiled inside of his stomach, but as his mind cleared he remembered the feelling—the gnawing, grasping desperation of it, almost like hunger but worse, eating away at him from inside his ribs. Without err, his eyes found Flint in the room, slumped in the chair behind his desk. His elbows were braced on the surface, face in his hands, fingers tangled tightly in his hair. 

He sat up, the motion forcing him to suck in a surprised gasp at the wave of pain that hit him. 

Immediately, Flint lifted his head and turned around, rising from his desk to help Silver sit up. 

“M—” Silver choked on the words in his dry throat. 

“Here,” Flint murmured, pressing a cup of water into his hand and helping him raise it to his lips. It soothed the raw feeling in his throat, but did nothing for the burning in his chest. 

“Mrs. Barlow?” Silver finally got out when he lowered the cup. “Where is she?”

Flint’s eyes widened momentarily in surprise before his expression collapsed, a raw look of agony briefly flashing across his face and then closing up, allowing no emotion at all. He turned abruptly away.

Dead then. Just as he feared. 

Silver had no platitudes to offer, no comfort to give, and he knew Flint would not accept it anyway. He watched the other man carefully place the cup within Silver’s reach, and then leave the cabin without a word. Once he was gone Silver slumped back down on the bench, letting the laudanum drag him into sleep again. 

Perhaps it was the proximity as Silver recovered in the captain’s cabin, or maybe it was the drugs, but never before had the bond between them seem so intense. 

The rum Silver could not yet stomach, he could taste in his mouth as Flint drank it. It was disorienting to try to sleep during the day, as Howell requested, feeling at once as if he was lying prone on the window seat and standing firmly on two feet on the main deck above him. He woke up one night to the feeling of a razor scraping against his scalp only to look over and see Flint standing in front of the mirror, methodically scraping away at the ragged stubble that remained on his head, the copper locks that had once covered it scattered carelessly on the floor at his feet. 

It got to the point where Silver didn’t know if, when he woke up abruptly in the night, gasping and sweat covered and shaking, it was from his nightmares or Flint's. 

Flint didn’t seem to be so affected. In fact, Silver didn’t know if it was the grief and rage that stopped him from feeling anything, or if the man was really that good at hiding anything he didn’t want anyone to see, but if Silver didn’t know better he would think Flint wasn’t Fated at all, let alone Fated to Silver.

Silver accidentally knocked his left leg against the side of the window seat as shifted, sucked in a breath at the pain and quickly looked up at Flint sitting at the desk. No flinch, not even a tightening in his posture to give away that he felt anything at all. Meanwhile, Silver’s scalp itched from the stubble he could see growing back on Flint’s head. 

Silver huffed and threw his head back against the cushion he placed between him and the back of the seat, trying to force his attention back out the window, to the stars that were the only thing he could see in the dark night.

It was maddening, the dual senses that had been forced upon him. Less than a week ago Silver had fully planned to be gone as soon as he had the gold. Screw Fate and screw Flint and his dangerous agenda. He never intended to be trapped by so-called destiny, and he certainly didn’t intend to change that just because he finally met the man whose experiences had layered his own since he was a child. Now he was trapped in the same room with Flint, unable to even get up and walk away. 

“Do you need more laudanum?” 

Silver jerked in surprise and turned away from the window. Flint had twisted around in his chair so he could face Silver and was staring, eyebrows raised pointedly, at where Silver’s fingers were digging into the flesh of his left thigh. 

“Oh,” Silver breathed. He hadn’t even realized he was doing that. He let go, flexing his hand to relieve the ache in it. “No. I don’t need any more.” The only thing worse than the pain were the drugs, dragging him into a fitful sleep where he had no way to stop the echoes from Flint slipping into his subconscious. 

Flint hummed doubtfully, his gaze serious as he studied Silver. 

Silver shifted uncomfortably, and not just because of the pain. He wanted that gaze _off_ of him. Since Silver had revealed the truth (or nearly the truth) about the Urca gold Flint had all but ignored him. He dropped off a new jug of water twice a day, said nothing when the food he brought went largely uneaten, kept his back to him as he sat at his desk and went over the charts, or pulled a book from the shelf to read. At the end of every night Flint would pause, gruffly ask him if he needed anything, before silently climbing into his bed, back to Silver. 

Silver, overwhelmed by his proximity, preferred it that way. Now, Flint’s attention felt heavy against his skin. He felt raw, exposed. 

“I need some god damned _distraction,_ is what I need,” Silver blurted out, desperate to interrupt Flint’s silent regard. “Anything besides staring out this window, or at these damn walls that will take my mind off of—” _you_ “—the pain,” he finished in a low growl, throwing his head back against the pillow again in frustration, eyes clenched shut. 

Flint was quiet. Silver didn’t attempt to meet the stare he knew was still on him, keeping his eyes resolutely shut. So when he heard the chair scrape against the floor, he assumed it was Flint turning back to whatever he had been doing at his desk. When he heard his footsteps cross the room however, he looked back up, watching in curiosity as Flint walked over to the large bookshelf that took up most of the left wall. Flint took a few moments to look through the titles, fingertips grazing the spines of the tombs, before finally settling on a slim volume he pulled from the top shelf. He then turned and walked back to Silver. 

To his surprise, Flint didn’t simply hand the book over to Silver. Instead he grabbed the back of his chair, swung it around so it was facing the window seat at an angle and settled down into it, opening the cover of the book with his left hand. 

Silver’s jaw dropped open. “What are you doing?”

Flint shot him a flat stare over the top of the book, slouching further down into the chair and looking very much like he was settling in for a long read. “Howell said you need to sleep. Since you will not take laudanum, nor rum, and have, as you say, nothing to distract you, we shall try this.” 

Silver felt only more astonished at the statement. “ _You_ are going to read me to sleep?”

Flint’s stony expression did not change. “I can ask one of the men to do it instead, if you prefer.” His voice was solicitous, as if the suggestion wasn’t the threat it so clearly was. He knew very well how Silver disliked it anytime members of the crew saw him like this. “At least three times a day one of them approaches me—” he continued, tone dry “—to ask me how you are and offer to help any way they can.”

As a threat, it worked. Silver could barely hold back his grimace at the thought. “Ah, no. No, that won’t be necessary.”

The corner of Flint’s lips lifted into a small, satisfied smirk. It was the closest thing to a smile Silver had seen him make since Silver told him about the Urca gold. “Then here we are.” He leaned further back in the chair, and without a further glance in Silver’s direction, used one finger to flip to the first page. 

“‘ _Concerning the things about which you ask to be informed I believe that I am not ill-prepared with an answer. For the day before yesterday—’”_

Well, at least it was in English. Silver had thought for a moment that he would be forced to listen to Flint’s truly terrible Spanish accent. 

Silver allowed himself to relax, shifting further down the window seat so he was more or less horizontal, and took the opportunity to observe the other man. Flint read well. Not that Silver had expected him to be illiterate. One of the first things he learned about Captain Flint other than the horror stories you heard at the different ports, was that the captain liked his books. But Flint read like a man used to reading aloud. His voice had a soothing, almost hypnotic rhythm, and he had enough sense of the dramatic to keep his tone varied and interesting. 

Who had he read for before? Was it the Barlow woman? Did they spend many an evening in the house on Providence Island that Flint shared with her, reading aloud to one another to pass the time? Flint developed a small line in between his brows as he concentrated on the words, which Silver presumed was from reading in such dim light. He imagined him in a cozy parlor, decorated by the genteel hand of Mrs. Barlow, the same small frown of concentration on his face as he read by the light coming from the fireplace. 

He couldn’t remember if he ever felt anything from Flint that would hint at such a situation. He couldn’t remember feeling the weight of any books in his hands before he started sleeping on the window seat in the cabin, never heard the calm tones of a woman’s voice as she read back to Flint, or felt the warmth of the fire on his skin. Still, even without experiencing the echo of it as proof, Silver knew without a doubt it was a scene that had happened on more than one occasion, and for a brief, sharp moment he stopped thinking of his own loss and ached for Flint’s.

Perhaps this unexpected favor wasn’t about Silver at all. Perhaps it was just about Flint needing someone to read to. 

“If the idea behind all this is for you to fall asleep,” Flint paused from his reading to drawl, “then you should _stop staring_ and close your eyes.” 

Flint didn’t bother looking up from the book as he spoke, but his tone had a dangerous edge to it that Silver knew better by now than to ignore. Being careful of his leg, he shifted until he was in a more comfortable position for sleep, and obediently closed his eyes. 

The other man immediately picked up where he left off. _“‘Well, the tale of love was on this wise:-But perhaps I had better begin at the beginning…’”_

Surprisingly, Silver felt sleep creep over him. He didn’t fight it, and for the first time since before Charles Town Silver slipped into an undrugged rest, soothed by the sound of his captain’s voice, and the feeling of paper under his fingertips.

  
  


* * *

  
  


It was inevitable. 

Silver had been fighting against destiny his whole life, but clearly it was Flint who he should have been fighting against. It had to have been Flint who unknowingly dragged Silver to the sea he had spent so many years avoiding. The force of the man’s rage called up a storm to battle against, the depth of his grief trapped them in the doldrums. So it only made sense that it was the chaotic maelstrom of Flint’s existence that pulled Silver into his life. A current so violent that there was no resisting until Silver was trapped below deck, feeling the storm beat against his face even as he grasped the hand of a dead friend, until Silver could feel the backlash from the pistol Flint held on two of his crew in his own shoulders, until the thirst and hunger pains that had doubled for Silver threatened to drive him mad. 

It was inevitable. 

But Silver refused to give into it without giving some of his own back. 

He could feel Flint’s sunburn on the back of his own neck, feel the pull and burn of his shoulder muscles along with his own as they rowed out to the rotting whale. And when the truth about the Urca gold spilled out of his lips it felt good to experience the way those muscles clenched in surprise, the pain in his jaw as Flint’s jaw muscles tightened and released in his anger. 

“You _will_ account for _me,_ ” he all but spat, and the words felt right. Felt real. They steadied him in a way he hadn’t been since the day he dragged Flint out of the water and onto that damned beach. 

When they worked together to kill the sharks it was like they were one being, bodies and mind in sync as they wrestled them into the launch, limbs filled with a sudden energy that he had thought died along with the storm. Flint smiled at him over the bodies from a gaunt and sunken face and Silver felt euphoric. 

The raw flesh tasted sweet on his tongue and Silver couldn’t take his eyes off Flint, savoring every bite both he and captain took. 

Flint was inevitable. But perhaps, Silver could accept this. A partner. The idea felt good—to not be alone. 

If there was anyone who could stand by Silver, take up arms against destiny and tell it go fuck itself, it was James Flint. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


Silver tried not to appear anxious as he stared out of the bars of their cage at the faint light streaming from where Flint was addressing the Maroon queen. For hours before his time with the queen he could feel Flint scrape his thumb against the small knife in his palm as he waited for his opportunity, waited for his death. Now he couldn’t feel anything. 

Not the gentle swaying of the bridge he walked down, nor the pressure of the guard’s hand on his shoulder. Not the heat from the blazing fire in the hut, nor even an echo of the thirst and hunger that had returned to them all since they were captured. 

Nothing. 

Silver wanted to pace. He wanted to clench and unclench his fists and march back and forth along the bars of their cage—heedless of the pain it would bring him—in an attempt to relieve the restless energy he could feel crawling under his skin, but he could feel Billy’s eyes on him. He could feel all of the crew’s eyes on him. So he stood still, one hand braced against a bar for balance, eyes locked on the doorway Flint had disappeared into an hour ago. 

As the night went on the crew grew restless, muttering amongst themselves and casting dark, unsure looks through the bars of their cage. By the time the sky was beginning to lighten with the dawn most of them had given up, dropping into what poor, uncomfortable sleep they managed to get curled up on the ground of the cage. Silver was forced to sit down, finally, the constant weight on his metal boot too much for his aching stump, but he stayed awake. He kept his eyes peeled for any sign of Flint or the Maroon queen below.

The sun had fully risen when Silver finally heard the crowd of people walking through the village below them. Through the din Silver could just make out Flint’s voice, low and commanding. 

“He’s alive,” Billy muttered, who had stayed up all night with him. He sounded confused, and Silver would guess, disappointed. Emotions that only increased when one of the guards opened the door of the cage and gestured for them to step out of it. 

Silver didn’t reply, eyes trained on the figure on the ground below, walking freely amongst the members of the village, even being helped into his coat.

“He did it,” Silver breathed. He couldn’t help the grin that broke across his face. “The goddamned maniac convinced her.”

Flint was waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs, eyes expectant, and Silver didn’t hold back his astonishment. The man standing in front of him was a different one from the night before. His broad shoulders were straight, as if free from an unknown weight, his gaze sharp and direct. Whatever he had discussed with the queen all night, it had lit within Flint a new fire, and he looked around at his crew as if assessing them for a purpose. 

When he looked at Silver it was with gratitude. 

Silver wanted to shift uncomfortably under the weight of his thanks. He flicked his gaze over Flint’s shoulder and for a brief moment he caught sight of the princess, her dark, serious eyes locked on him. Then she turned, and followed her mother’s men out of the street.

“So,” John turned his attention back on Flint. “What happens now?”

  
  


* * *

  
  


War. 

What had seemed like an escape to Silver all those years ago, had soon proved to be a worse hell than what had been waiting for him. At first, the officers on the ship Silver found himself on gave the men lofty speeches, full of valor and honor and sacrifice, but after months at sea, and bloody battle after bloody battle even they quieted, just as weary and gaunt as those they led. 

As Spain and England fought over ports there were less and less options to resupply. Their meager military rations had to stretch further, hollowing out their cheeks and weakening their strength until half of the crew succumbed to the fever caught from the enemy’s ship they had taken in battle. 

The war didn’t care though. When they finally reached a safe port to resupply they recruited fresh faces. Young men desperate for glory, older men desperate for quarter, it didn’t matter. The war ate on their lives like a slobbering, ravenous beast. Hardened sailors sobbed for their mother, delirious as they attempted to hold their own guts in their hands, spilling from an open sword wound. Children were felled in the street of the towns they took, their bodies left forgotten in the dirt. Women screamed their throats raw, clawing at the faces of bloodlust-maddened soldiers. 

The beast ate them all, gnashing its teeth on their bones even as it howled for more. 

Silver lasted two years onboard the ship he had signed up for that desperate day on the docks. Then the next time they made port for shore leave he slipped away, talking his way onto a merchant ship and sailing away before he was even expected back.

He could live as a coward, just as long as he lived. 

When Flint talked of the war he had planned, his eyes shone with fervor. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


_A war to plan for._

Hearing the word spoken by someone other than Flint was like a spray of cold water against Silver's back. He barely resisted the urge to flinch. 

Had he really allowed him to be pulled so far into Flint’s influence that he let it get this far without question?

Flint braced himself with the shovel as he sat down across from Silver. He was breathing a little hard from digging, and there was a trickle of sweat making its way down between his shoulder blades. Silver could feel the tickle of it against his own skin. It reminded him that he was keeping his own secrets, and about something Flint should, by all rights, be privy to, even as Silver pried into his. 

Silver pushed the guilt aside, and pressed forward anyway. 

Thomas. 

Flint breathed the name like a prayer. Those two syllables were the only time Flint’s voice wasn’t leaden with regret or anger as he told the tale of his loss, and Silver recognized the weight of that loss within his own chest. 

At one point in the tale Flint paused, eyes staring sightlessly into the jungle around them. “We weren’t—weren’t—” he stuttered over the words, looking back at Silver to make sure he understood despite that. _Fated_ , Silver knew he couldn’t say. Like that would have justified their relationship, even though both of them knew in the eyes of so-called civilization it didn’t matter at all.

“I loved him.” Flint said it simply, without ceremony or apology, and Silver couldn’t understand it. The idea scared Silver, to tie yourself so entirely to someone that you would declare war on the world in their name, rend the heavens and wreak destruction on even yourself in order to do so. He couldn’t fathom it.

So he didn’t tell Flint that he could feel the splinter he was worrying in the pad of his own thumb, and instead he voiced another fear, a warning, in order to protect them both.

Flint only smiled. _I won’t worry too much._

Silver would. 

  
  



	2. you cannot harmonize that which disagrees

_Silver’s_ _palms skated down the smooth skin of Madi’s sides and paused at the swell of her hips, fingers curling into her warmth. He circled the point of her hipbone with his thumb and pressed his forehead to the curve of her stomach, breathed against her skin. Her fingers tangled in his hair, lightly traced the shell of his ear._

_“John,” she gasped and he shuddered at the sound of his name from her lips—_

  
  


—the flat of the blade landed once more against the side of his neck. Silver froze at the weight of it, warmed from the heat of the Caribbean sun. He rolled his shoulder, more out of frustration than an attempt to dislodge it and Flint stepped back, eyes considering. 

“Again,” he nodded at Silver, tone firm—  
  


— _he dragged his mouth, open and panting, along the line of her shoulder, tasted the sweat pooled in the dip of her neck. A low moan erupted from her throat and then her fingers were curling around his jaw, pulling him to her. Their mouths pressed into one another, soft lips and soft breaths together and he never wanted this moment to end. Wanted to stay here, shaking apart in her arms—_

  
  


—Silver parried Flint’s blow, twisting to the side in order to counter, and the sand shifted beneath his crutch. The world titled as he lost his balance, only to right again at the quick arms around him, pulling him straight. 

Silver huffed out a small laugh. “I don’t think an enemy would have done that,” he commented, shooting a wry smile at the other man as he stepped back. 

Flint’s mouth twitched up at the corners. “You’re right.” He turned his back to Silver, walked a few paces away. “Next time I will let you fall.” He swung back around, and raised his blade, humor still present in his eyes— 

  
  


_—Silver could feel the weight of her gaze on him, and he turned his head from the quiet view of the beach in front of him to raise his eyes expectantly. Madi’s eyes were serious._

_“Who are they?” She nodded at Silver’s hands, where he had been unconsciously fidgeting with the weight of invisible rings._

_He sucked in a breath. “I don’t—” he started, wanting to deny it, to lie, but she stepped closer, gentle fingers reaching for his arm—_   
  


—the blade caught him on his biceps, hard enough to sting, but not bruise. Flint lowered his arm with a sigh. “Don’t watch my eyes,” he instructed. “The blade will not come from my eyes. Any swordsman worth his salt will know better than to reveal his next move that way.”

“But it's hard to look away,” Silver quipped, “with the great Captain Flint staring me down so fiercely.” He rubbed irritably at the spot on his arm, and hoped spitefully that Flint could feel it too. 

Flint laughed, expression open, eyes crinkled at the corners— 

_—“I know the signs. My parents—” she took a deep breath, the loss of her father still fresh. “—they were Fated.” A small, distant smile shaped her lips, eyes on the water. “She always knew when he was close to home.” Those eyes turned to him, catching him, as always. “Who are they? Do you not know?”_

_Silver understood now, the wariness that sometimes slipped into her expression when she looked at him. He didn’t want to lie to her, but he didn’t want to say either. So he stayed silent, drawing a line. He hoped that the touch of her hand on his arm meant she understood as she walked away—_

  
  


—the weight of Flint’s gaze was heavy on Silver’s back as he walked away, down the hill and back to the maroon village. Even heavier were the man’s unanswered questions, twisting uneasily at the pit of Silver’s stomach, a sensation mirrored, he knew, in Flint’s.

“You just told me that story again,” he had said to Silver. “Why is that?” he had asked. But it wasn’t the real question. The real one was still trapped behind his lips, lingering behind his eyes.

 _Please_ , Silver had thought desperately, eyes slit against the sun glinting off the ocean. He knew, without looking, that Flint’s muscles had tensed, as if in anticipation. _Please don’t ask. Please don’t make me lie to you_ —

  
  


_—the light from the fire flickered across her skin, revealing, tantalizing. He reached out, tracing the edge of the light on the outside of her thigh, feeling the heat of it on his fingertips. Beside him Madi hummed sleepily, tucking her face further into his neck._

_“Can’t sleep?” The words were soft, almost pressed into his skin rather than spoken. They made him smile._

_“I rarely sleep for long,” he murmured into hair, eyes still locked on the pattern he was tracing into her skin—_

  
  


—the question lingered in the air as they practiced. _Can that be enough and there still be trust between us?_

Flint’s expression was no longer lax with good humor, his brows drawn as he stepped forward, arm rising. Silver almosted expected the sword play to turn serious. He kept his eyes peeled as he parried Flint’s attacks, searching for any sign that Flint was no longer holding back, mind waiting for some sensation to let him know said trust was gone.

But Flint never pushed too hard, nor moved too fast. He kept up the steady pace he had since he started teaching him, only escalating as much as Silver could handle. Silver did his best to keep up, even as he tried hard not to miss the open expression on his opponent’s face— 

  
  


— _Madi rolled into him, shifting her body languidly over his until they were lying chest to chest, legs tangled._

_“Then I will stay awake with you.” She pressed her mouth to his, her gentle hands reaching out to cup his face. The pads of her fingers traced his cheekbones as they kissed and he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her ever more closer._

_God, he loved her. He drew his hand up her spine to cup the back of her neck as he pressed his mouth against hers, fervently, worshipfully. His skin felt on fire everywhere it touched hers. He loved her. He loved her, loved her, loved—_

  
  


—Flint’s blade landed less and less on the side of Silver’s shoulder and neck. Their pace picked up as Silver started moving easier with the crutch, no longer a hindrance as he fought. Still, he froze in surprise the first time his blade grazed the skin of Flint’s neck. 

Flint knocked the blade aside, a wry expression taking over his face. “ _Don’t_ stop,” he said pointedly. “Press the advantage.” Still, he gave Silver a pleased look as he straightened his shoulder for another bout. “Let’s see if you can do that again.” He stepped forward, blade swinging— 

  
  


— _the waves tumbled gently into the sand at their feet, reaching for but not touching them. Madi was nestled in the v of his legs, tucked against his chest. He fitted his chin into the dip of her shoulder and let his chest rise and fall with hers, in and out, like the waves._

_“It’s Flint isn’t it?”_

_“Hm?” He pressed his nose into her hair, eyes half closed in contentment._

_Her fingers circled the last two on his hand, where he could even now feel the weight of rings not there. “The one you are tied to. It’s Flint.” He tensed, didn’t answer. “I’ve seen the way you look at him sometime, and him at you. And the way you sometimes move together… it’s like you are of one being.”_

_Silver tightened his arms around her, fitted his palm against her rib cage. “I feel one with you,” he said, instead of answering._

_She tilted her head back against his shoulder, exposing her long neck to his lips. “The one does not negate the other.”_

_They sat on the beach, the night wrapped around them like a blanket, and breathed together._

_“Does he know?” she whispered and the words lingered in the air between them, unanswered—_

  
  


_—_ the dull blades collided with a low ring. Again, and again. Fast and faster as Flint pushed Silver to be better, to be quicker. Silver panted with the effort of keeping up, a bruise forming on his arm beneath the crutch, but he did not call for a break. He raised his sword to meet Flint’s. Again. And again— 

“Enough.” Flint dropped the point of his blade. “We’ve done enough today.” He walked several paces away, long strides eating up the distance to where they had left their coats and a full bottle of rum. In one smooth motion Flint thrust the end of the blade into the sand and reached for the bottle, throwing himself down by his weapon. 

He wasn’t even breathing hard, Silver noticed with some irritation as he followed him across the sand with significantly less grace.

“Tell me,” Silver said as he thrust his own sword into the sand beside Flint’s. “If you hadn’t been holding back, would my blade even have gotten close to you before?”

Flint looked up at him with a sharp smile. “Well, I do have an advantage.”

Silver eased to the ground, bracing himself with the crutch. “Believe me,” he said as he landed in the sand with a grunt, the motion nearly knocking his shoulder into Flint’s. “I’m aware.” He tossed the crutch down into the sand at his feet, hands automatically reaching to ease the ache in his left thigh.

“I was referring to my time in the Royal Navy.” Flint pulled the cork out of the bottle with a hollow pop and took a long drink. Silver could feel the burn of it in his own throat. “I joined them when I was fifteen. Trust me,” he passed the bottle Silver. “Had I not been holding back, your blade would not have gotten close even if you hadn’t lost your leg.”

“I don’t know about that,” Silver responded mildly. He tipped the bottle to his lips, letting the sweet burn ease his own thirst. From the corner of his eye he could see Flint give him a doubtful look. 

“Is that so,” his tone was dry. “I distinctly recall you asking me if you were really going to have to fight the men in the captain's cabin on the man-of-war after impulsively bashing his head in.” He reached for the bottle.

“It was _not_ impulsive. It was very well thought out.” 

Flint actually threw his head back as he laughed. 

Silver was arrested by the sight. There was a red streak across his nose and cheekbones from the sun. A color that was echoed along the shell of ears. As he laughed the corners of his eyes crinkled, fine lines of white spidering into sun-pinked skin. Something inside Silver relaxed at the sight. He’d thought, for a moment, that the ease between them had been lost. 

“I wouldn’t call any of your schemes _well_ thought out,” he drawled, still chuckling. 

“It worked didn’t it? We managed to take a fully armed Spanish warship, just the two of us, and we barely knew each other then." The press of Flint’s shoulder on his was like a banked fire against his flesh as he leaned over to grab the bottle from Flint’s hands. Even in the Caribbean heat, Silver didn’t want to pull away. “The British Empire would do well not to underestimate what we can accomplish together now." 

Flint's expression sobered and turned speculative as he watched Silver lean back on his elbows in the sand. Silver offered the bottle back to him but he waved it away, turning instead to face the sea. _"'Terrible was their might and strength,’”_ he murmured _, “‘and the thoughts of their hearts were great, and they made an attack upon the gods.'"_

Silver couldn't help but frown quizzically. Flint sounded almost forlorn. "What is that from?" 

"Plato," Flint looked at him over his shoulder. "I read it to you once. You don't remember?" 

"As I recall," Silver said wryly, "the point of those midnight readings were to help me sleep. Which I did." More soundly than he ever had, or has since, he didn't add. When Flint didn't respond he nudged him with his foot. "Go on. Tell me what it's about." 

Flint hesitated, studying Silver, one hand reaching up to scrape his fingers through his beard. The other, Silver could feel, was twisting a ring around his finger with his thumb, as if nervous.

What did Flint have to be nervous about?

Finally, Flint seemed to come to a decision. He took the rum from Silver, presenting him with his back as he took a drink. He stayed that way and as he spoke it was like he was telling the story to the sea. 

"The ancient humans grew powerful. Too powerful. Strong enough to start to rival the gods. They were said to even have scaled heaven, and lay their hands upon them. The gods began to fear them, but they did not want to kill them as they were loath to lose the tributes the humans paid them."

"So what happened?” Silver pressed when Flint paused. “What did the gods do?" 

Flint continued to stare at the sea, his thumb making idle circles on the neck of the bottle. "They destroyed them," he said gruffly. "Wrent them in two, diminishing their power and ensuring they received double the tributes at the same time." 

Silver grimaced. "Well," he said into the silence. "That's gruesome. And the humans could live like that?" 

Flint brought the rum to his mouth, taking one more drink. With an air of finality, he placed it firmly into the sand. "Not well." 

With that he stood up, brushing the sand from his clothes and preparing to trek back to the village.

  
  


* * *

  
  


The water closed over his head as he sank. 

His fingers fumbled with the rope caught on the metal boot, the fibers swollen from the water, making it hard to untangle. The salt of the water stung his eyes and nose as he sunk deeper and deeper into the sea, trying not to give in to the need to open his mouth and breathe the water, knowing it would be the end. 

He couldn’t help but look up, briefly, from where he was struggling with the rope, and caught a glimpse of the bright Carribean sunlight filtered through the water, turning it a perfect, brilliant blue.

 _No,_ he thought.

He thought of Flint as he struggled to pull free, sinking to the bottom of the sea with a bullet wound in his shoulder. Did he too look up at the sky as he sank? Or did he accept it, turning his eyes to the depths below, the weight of his loss, his failure, pulling him down until Silver dove in and pulled him out. 

Flint wasn’t going to dive in and pull him out. 

He could feel the phantom touch of wood underneath his hands, the unsteady, choppy rocking in his stomach that told him Flint was in a launch, could feel the press of small, familiar shoulders against his biceps and knew Flint was protecting what was important to Silver. 

_No,_ he thought again. Only this time there was anger behind it. _You will not take me this way,_ he raged at Fate. _Not now. I do not end this way._

The leather straps of his boot were slippery in the water, but the knife still caught, slicing through and releasing him. Free from the weight Silver swam towards the light above him, towards Madi, towards Flint.

HIs lungs burned as he swam and dark spots appeared at the corners of his vision. He fought it, fought the weakness pulling at his limbs and his consciousness as he kept moving, kept dragging himself further and further away from the bottom. He wondered, as his fist grasped the edge of the broken hull, if Flint could feel the weakness too. If he didn’t make it, would Flint feel Silver slip away and know it was him?

Silver kept moving, pushing himself until his head broke the surface of the water inside the smoldering carcass of the ship, until he gasped in a lungful of air that was such a relief it hurt. 

He saw Flint again a few days later, on the beach with that bright, perfect blue a backdrop behind him, the body of the English soldier he killed a grim foreground at his feet, and for the first time Silver wanted Flint to know. For one sharp moment he hoped that Flint would walk up to him, knowledge in his eyes that Silver had denied him, and pull him close. He wanted to feel those hands grasp him tight by the shoulders and know that Flint could feel the echo of the bruises on his own skin. That the other man knew what that echo meant. 

And when he saw Madi not too long after, he rushed to her the way he would not allow himself to rush to Flint, pulled her close in a way he had denied himself when Flint had been in reach again. She cupped his face in both her palms and he pressed his forehead to hers, tears forming at the corner of his eyes from relief so sharp it was like breathing air after finally breaking the surface. Her lips were soft against his face, and he suddenly had a thought—so clear and strong it made his stomach clench with the want of it—of what it would be like to turn his head, reach out one hand and pull Flint into their embrace, what it would be like to feel his lips on his cheekbone, his jaw, his breath a small puff of air against Silver’s brow. 

When he and Madi finally separated his eyes automatically sought Flint, but he was far away, his back to them, already barking orders at the men. 

“It is not right,” Madi said later, when they were wrapped so close together there was no room for light between them. “Keeping it from him. You should tell him.” 

Silver hummed. “So you have warmed up to him since I’ve been gone. Do you no longer mistrust him then?”

Madi was quiet for a moment. “When we thought you were dead—” she cut herself off and took a deep breath, as if composing herself. “It was as painful for him as it was for me. It is clear that he feels drawn to you, but he does not have the fortune of knowing why like you do.”

Silver was quiet, brushing his closed lips along the skin of her arm as he thought. “I never intended to tie myself anymore to my Fated than destiny already had,” he finally told her. “I envy you actually. To live a life untouched by the grasp of Fate, to be able to make your own choices, to not be trapped.”

Madi pulled away, separating them enough that she could meet his eyes solemnly. “And it is Fate that keeps you by his side, is it? If you could not feel the echo of his life on yours you would withhold your regard from him? Your friendship?”

Silver looked away, unable to reply. They both knew he wouldn’t.

Madi let out a soft breath, curling back around him. Her fingertips ran up the side of his arm, until they reached his shoulder, curling her palm around it. “The only one trapping you is you, John Silver.”

  
  


* * *

“What was Thomas like?” Silver had asked Flint once. It was the third night after the victory against Hornigold and the English, and the men, pirates and maroon alike, were drinking for the third night in a row. Silver and Flint were sitting away from the rowdiest part of the festivities, sharing—as had become their habit—a bottle of rum at a much more sedate pace. Still, the warmth of spirit had relaxed him, had loosened his tongue, and he couldn’t help the question from slipping out.

Flint was slouched back against the steps that lead to one of the wooden bridges, propped up on his elbows. Silver was to his right on the steps slightly below, his left thigh stretching out on one step, his right leg braced on the next one down. From their perch they could view most of the men celebrating in the village center.

At Silver’s question Flint looked down, brows drawn together. “Why do you ask?”

Silver shrugged, raising the bottle and tilting it so he could drink the rum straight from the mouth. They had given up scrounging around for cups after the first night. “Curiosity I suppose,” Silver told him after he had drunk his fill. “He must have been quite the man to have inspired such devotion from two people like you and Mrs. Barlow.” 

Flint drew his fingers through his beard as he studied Silver, who only just restrained himself from rubbing at his own chin in an attempt to stop the sensation of fingernails along his skin. He knew, as the other man stared at him in contemplative silence, that Flint was deciding just how much to reveal to Silver. 

Finally, his shoulders relaxed and he leaned further back against the step. “He was,” he told Silver. “Quite the man. One whose plans for Nassau, for the pardon, were made not just because it would work and make Nassau stable, but because he saw it as the right thing to do. If there was a path with little to no lives lost, that is the path that Thomas would take.” 

The side of Flint's mouth quirked up in a small, wistful smile. “He was a better man than me.” 

Silver thought that would be the end of the conversation, but then Flint continued in a soft voice: “He was thoughtful. Confident. He could be stubborn in an argument, but never rude. Miranda especially liked to go head to head with him in a debate, and I would spend hours in their home, listening to them talk, each refusing to budge from their point and both trying to pull me to their side of things. If one of them managed to, no matter what side I chose I would be accused by the other of being biased."

Flint looked up at the stars as he talked, posture at ease as he leaned back to view them better. It was as if, free now to talk to someone about those times, something had relaxed inside of him. Silver could almost see it now, the softness of the man beneath the legend of the feared Captain Flint, the man who had spent warm nights with his lovers, permitting them to tease him as they laughed together.

“Do you ever wonder what he would have thought of all this?” Silver asked softly into the quiet. “If a man who sought the least violent path could understand you fighting a war in his name?” 

Silver immediately regretted the questions as he watched the complicated, anguished expression twist on Flint’s face. If he could have, he would have snatched the words back out of the air and swallowed them down again. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”

Flint’s quiet words cut him off. “Understand? Yes.” The words were a rasp in Flint’s throat. “Forgive? Maybe. But the sorrow the knowledge would bring him—” Flint couldn’t finish the thought, and shook his head. 

Silver swallowed. His throat felt dry and tight, and he didn’t know if it was Flint he was feeling, or if it was his own reaction to seeing such pain on the man’s face.

He almost dropped the subject there, almost didn’t ask, but in the end he had to voice one more question. 

“Does the idea of that ever make you want to stop?”

Flint stared, not at Silver or the revelry below, but out into the distance above the trees and all the way, Silver imagined, to a London a decade in the past. “Yes.”

Flint didn’t hedge, didn’t whisper, but gave the word solemnly to the air. 

“Then I think about what England had taken from him, of what it has taken from me, from us, from them,” he nodded in the direction of the queen’s quarters, “and I know that for men like Thomas to survive in this world it is up to men like me to do what is necessary.” 

“Even if that means sacrificing everything to do it,” Silver said lowly. 

At that Flint looked away from whatever vision he saw in the stars and tilted his face down to Silver once again. For a moment the fire below them revealed a conflict playing out on Flint’s features, and he opened his mouth as if to let some secret words escape, only to snap it shut a second later, his expression smoothing out. He looked away. “I’ve already sacrificed,” he said roughly. 

_Not everything_ , Silver had thought. _Not you. Not me._ But it wasn’t an argument he could make. 

Later, in a Nassau wrenched from the hands of England by two legends, a Nassau on the brink of war it very likely could not win, Silver pulled aside one of his men and handed him a piece of paper. 

“I need you to do something for me,” he told him quietly. 

The piece of paper contained only two things. 

A place. And a name. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


Grief is not a quiet thing. 

It raged inside Silver, howling as it tore him apart. It lacerated him from beneath his ribs, from his stomach, slashing at his lungs and his throat until there was nothing left of him. Just a hollow, inconsolable scream thrashing against his flesh, begging to be released. The dull ache that he had felt from Flint over the years was nothing but a faint whisper of its reality, and it was only now that Silver truly understood.

 _This_ is why Fate had tied them together. 

Now there was nothing else in the world for either of them. Just the war. Just each other and their losses and a rage that would never end. 

He could feel Flint at his back. It seemed to Silver as if he was far away when he spoke, his broken platitudes and apologies making their way to his ears from a distance, muffled and wavering, like he was under water. 

“ _Not your fault,_ ” was all he managed to force out of the vise that had become his throat. 

It wasn’t. 

Everything Flint ever had, everything he had ever touched, ever loved, was destroyed by his own actions. In his life before Nassau, before the hand of Fate had seen fit to throw him into the path of Flint and his war, Silver had never loved anything. 

He should have known better. Weren’t he and Flint the same, after all?

Madi’s death wasn’t Flint’s fault. 

It was Silver’s.

  
  


* * *

  
  


_It is some kind of hell to be forced to choose one irreplaceable thing over another._

He had said the words to Flint, fear sitting like a dull stone in his stomach, and he had not known what a premonition they would turn out to be. 

Those words haunted him as he stood on the deck of the _Walrus_ and watched Woodes Rogers hold a pistol on the woman he loved, as he stood on that same deck and saw the outline of Flint disappear into the jungle of Skeleton Island, knowing he had been betrayed. They nipped at his heels as he followed Flint’s footsteps on the island and sent half of the men with him to their deaths.

They echoed in the sound of their blades crossing, whispered to him in the gasps of their breaths as they fought.

_Some kind of hell._

Madi wept in the circle of his arms. Her tears cleared tracks in the grime that covered her beautiful face and her breath shuddered against his neck. Silver held her close, reveled in the warmth of her skin against his, in the pounding heartbeat he could feel against his own chest. When he learned that Woodes Rogers had her, and intended to ransom her for the cache, all he could think about was that he wished he was as tied to her as he was to Flint. He wanted to feel what she felt, to know by the burn from her shackles or the ache in her back or the taste of water on her tongue that she was still alive, that she was still with him in this world.

Now, he savored every sign of life. Madi wept in his arms, and Silver was grateful.

But when they reached the main deck and stepped out into the sunlight and she saw Flint victorious above them, the ship surrendered and Woodes Rogers in chains, his men defeated and now nothing to stand between them and their war, Madi smiled. 

Silver looked upon the triumph and euphoria in her face, and felt fear sink like a stone in his stomach, heavy, like a premonition.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Deep in the jungle of an island sailors feared to step foot on, Silver held a pistol at his Fated’s chest. 

He could feel the warmth from the stone that Flint had sat on against his own thighs, wanted to reach out and smooth the sting he could feel on his forehead from the cut on Flint’s. As Flint’s shoulders shifted a sigh, the deep shuddering breath could have come from his own lungs. 

Silver’s finger was on the trigger and he didn’t know if the twisted, roiling feeling in his chest was from him or Flint.

There was a desperate edge to Flint’s voice as he tried to convince Silver, his expressive face almost pleading as he talked. This was the man who manipulated the crew into voting him captain again even after he betrayed them for gold, who talked men into battling against a tempest instead of accepting a pardon, who convinced a queen to not only accept the threat they posed to her people, but join them in a war against an Empire fought only with a few pirate ships and an island of escaped slaves. 

Silver loved him. He knew it— _felt_ it—clearer now than he ever had before. He loved him. He loved him and his aim did not waver. There were tears in his eyes.

Fate was cruel.

This was not a lesson. Silver had always known this.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Hands tried to escort Flint down to the hold when they got back to the ship, but Silver stopped him. 

“Put him in the captain’s cabin,” he ordered. Hands hesitated, an angry, stubborn look on his face, and Silver leaned in threateningly. “Do as I say,” he growled. 

Resentfully, Hands did so, pulling Flint forward by the arm with a rough jerk. Silver stayed behind to give a few orders to the crew, and then followed wearily behind them. 

When he entered the cabin Flint was standing directly in the middle, back to the door. He didn’t react when Silver walked in, but stood still, gazing through the window. Hands offered to draw up a shift of guards to stay and watch him, but Silver waved him off. “I’ll stay with him. And I’ll call if I need someone.” 

Hands left with a scowl and didn’t remove the shackles around Flint’s wrists. 

Silver decided that was best. 

He ran his hands over his face with a sigh and made his way to the chair behind the desk, practically dropping into it and slumping against the back. Flint had no reaction to the role reversal, to Silver feeling free to take the captain’s chair. He didn’t so much as raise his eyebrows at Silver. He just walked a few steps to the bookcase and sat down on the bench in front of it. 

They said nothing. It wasn’t that there was nothing to say. There was so much Silver could have said to Flint. It just didn’t matter anymore. 

With the wind at their back it took two days to get to Savannah. Silver had the men string up another hammock in the cabin so they could both lie down, but neither one of them slept. Flint didn’t even try. When he wasn’t sitting silently on the bench he was standing silently in front of the windows, mouth tense, eyes distant. Silver thought, at first, that he might be scheming, planning out some convoluted way to take control of the ship and put the shackles around Silver’s wrists instead. As they got closer to land however, it became apparent that no such schemes were coming. 

The defiant set of Flint’s shoulders soon rounded out into something softer, his gaze contemplative as he looked out the windows, watching the churning water they left in their wake. Even the restless motion of his hands has stilled, no longer fiddling with the rings on his fingers, but laying open his lap, fingers lax.

The silence was only broken when they caught sight of land and Silver brought several members of his crew down into the cabin to give them instructions for when they docked. 

Flint watched the men leave the office, waiting until the last one had closed the door behind him to speak. 

“You will stay here.” His voice was quiet, but it was firm. It was an order. 

“What?” Silver leaned forward, one hand automatically reaching out on the desk, as if to touch the other man. He shook his head. “No. No that’s not what I—”

“You will stay here,” Flint cut him off. “Your men—” Silver’s hand involuntarily clenched at the phrase. For so long it had been _our men_ that it was jarring to hear the other. “—will take me ashore. They will take me into this place, take me to Thomas. They will do this and not you. Because if I go into this plantation you have found for me and Thomas is not there I do not want to see your face.”

Silver's protestations died in his throat. 

Billy once told him of the torture he had endured under the Royal Navy. He had described in terrible, visceral detail the way the leather had slowly tightened over his ribcage, trapping it in a vise until his ribs began to crack, until even the slightest breath brought him unimaginable pain. 

Silver felt that now. An unrelenting pressure wrapped itself tightly around his chest at the thought of staying on this ship, of having his last moments with this man he had come to love cut so short. It only tightened further, squeezing the air from his lungs in a rough gasp as he nodded, agreeing. He would give Flint this.

“Alright. Captain,” he rasped. 

There was a bitter twist to his mouth when Flint finally looked at Silver.

“That’s not who I am anymore.” 

The sun was bright and hot as they made their way up the Savannah river. On the deck with Flint and the few men he had carefully picked out to escort him, Silver had to hold his hand above his eyes as he stared out over the rail to the port they were approaching. When they docked, he sent the men over the side first, letting them leave one by one until it was only he and Flint left. 

Flint made no move to follow. He looked out into the city, hands still shackled in front of him, squinting from the glare of the sun. Silver stood beside him, their shoulders a hands breadth from touching.

“I thought I would feel it,” Flint suddenly told him, and Silver looked up at him, brows raised in question. “Your leg,” he clarified. 

Silver sucked in a breath. 

“I thought I would feel it, share the pain with you as it healed, but I didn’t. So I thought I must have been wrong.” 

The world was trembling beneath Silver’s feet, and he trembled with it. His hand clenched on the railing so hard it hurt and he tried to focus on the pain, focus on anything but the feeling of his own heartbeat, rapid and pounding through his throat, in his ears. 

Flint continued, taking no notice of the effect his words were having. “But then, I would sometimes feel unbalanced as I walked, as if I couldn’t quite compensate for the motion of the sea under the ship anymore. I felt fingertips brushing my cheekbones, tenderly cupping my face. I had thought for a while, that it was the madness from Miranda’s death lingering within me, that it was her touch I imagined.” He smiled wistfully. “And then I saw Madi place her hands on your face that day you came back from the dead, and I could feel them against my own.”

Silver breathed. He couldn’t do anything else. 

“As a young man I started experiencing the strangest things. I would be out on the deck of a ship in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, the cold spray of it against my skin, and be sweltering. No matter how firmly I pulled back my hair, I could feel the brush of curls against my face.” 

Flint’s shoulders rose and dipped like a wave as took in a breath. “And there was this song,” he continued, softer now. “I heard it over and over again for years. Close, as if it were being hummed into my ear.”

Flint began to sing, his eyes falling shut as his low voice formed a melody Silver knew better than his own name, though he had not heard it since his mother had died. “ _Que dicen que va a llevarse—”_

“— _la paloma de su nío,”_ Silver finished softly, completing the verse. His own voice was wrecked, quivering and raw as he forced it through his tight throat. 

Flint finally turned his head to look at Silver, meeting his eyes with a steady gaze. “So there we are then,” he said quietly.

Silver took in a deliberate, shaking breath and let it out with resolve. “There we are,” he confirmed.

Flint nodded, once, and looked away from Silver, back to the city. They stood together side by side, hands braced against the railing. Silver took the opportunity to look at Flint’s face one more time. He took in the shape of his mouth, slightly downturned at the corners, the tired lines framing the shape of it. He studied the crease of his brow, the light dusting of freckles across his nose and cheekbones, the delicate spiral of his ear. On the dock below Silver’s men were waiting at a discrete distance, and yet Silver found himself unable to make Flint move. 

“When the Greeks wrote about Fate," Flint murmured into the silence, "they were tragedies.” 

He didn’t wait for a response, didn’t try to catch Silver’s eye one more time. Without ceremony or hesitation, he stepped onto the ramp leading to the dock below, his every step taking him further and further away. 

Back in his cabin Silver was slumped over his desk, head braced in his hands, fingers tangled harshly in his hair. He knew Flint had arrived at the plantation. He could feel the phantom touch of rough, calloused hands cupping the back of his neck, the hot press of a forehead against his own. 

It gave him no comfort.

  
  


* * *

  
  


_“I will stay.”_

Silver stepped out of Madi’s hut, of the one they had shared together. His steps were heavy and ungraceful, exhaustion settling deep in his bones as he made his way down the rough wooden ramp that curled around the building and led into the village. 

_“And I will wait.”_

The queen and the chiefs were still gathered together, ratifying the treaty. The reactions in the village were mixed. Some, angry at the loss of their revolution, muttered darkly under their breath as he passed. Others celebrated, raising rum filled cups in tribute, expressions relieved at their new, guaranteed freedom. Silver ignored them all.

_“A day...a month...a year…”_

He walked through the village all the way to the edge of it, stopping in front of a small hut separate from the rest, tucked neatly into a small clearing in the jungle. 

_“...forever.”_

Flint’s hut. While most of the crew camped in tents when they were ashore on the Maroon island, the queen had been gracious enough to have a hut built for Flint. A place of privacy for him to rest and plan out their war. 

Now, Silver was the one to push open the rough door and step into its shelter. He paused in the entryway, looking around the small room that was almost as familiar as the one he had shared with Madi. 

How many nights had he sat across from Flint on the chair by the table? A cup of rum in his hand, sea charts and battle plans and supply lists spread out on the table between them, their voices low and intimate as they talked and planned, the low light of the candle shifting the shadows on Flint's face?

Silver closed his eyes and shook his head, as if to dispel the image. With weary steps he left the doorway, letting it fall closed behind him. In addition to the table against the wall there was a low, single bed, a rough fireplace filled with long-cold ashes and a bookshelf. Any home for Flint, Silver knew, be it the captain’s cabin, the cottage he shared with Miranda, or his hut, was not complete without his books. Before they led the disastrous attack on Woodes Rogers ships at Nassau Flint had gone through the trouble of collecting his favorites from the ship and bringing them here. 

The bookshelf is where Silver went. He lightly caressed their spines with his fingertips, tracing the titles, feeling the embossed leather against his skin and wondered if Flint could feel the echo. Most of them were unfamiliar to Silver, but there were a few, here and there that he recognized, having read them himself or seen them at one point or another in Flint’s hands. One familiar red book was conspicuously missing, and Silver didn’t know if Flint had Thomas’s gift to him with him on the _Walrus_ when it was destroyed in the waters of Skeleton Island or if he had lost it before, but Silver had hoped that it was still here. He wanted to curl his hand along the back of it, his palms fitting where Flint’s had so many times.

He started to turn away, hand trailing along the wood of the top shelf when another book caught his eye. It wasn’t lined up with the others. Instead it was tucked on top of them, a thin cord of leather trailing over their spines.

Silver recognized the slim volume. It was the one Flint had read to him in his cabin to lull him to sleep. It was with unsteady hands that he pulled it from the shelf.

 _The Symposium_ the title read. Plato. Silver ran his thumb over the name and remembered a bright afternoon on the beach, Flint’s voice low as he told the story. He opened the book to the page marked. 

_In the second place,_ Silver read, _the primeval man was round, his back and sides forming a circle; and he had four hands and four feet, one head with two faces, looking opposite ways._

_“‘Terrible were their might and strength,’”_ Silver read the words aloud, remembering Flint voicing them that day on the beach. _“‘And the thoughts of their hearts were great.’”_

 _He spoke and cut men in two, like a sorb-apple which is halved for pickling, or as you might divide an egg with a hair… After the division the two parts of man, each desiring his other half, came together, and throwing their arms about one another, entwined in mutual embraces, longing to grow into one, they were on the point of dying from hunger and self-neglect, because they did not like to do anything apart…They were being destroyed._

Silver read no more, could read no more. He closed the cover of the book, blinking back the sting of tears. Slowly, feeling exhaustion in every muscle, every bone, he made his way to the bed. Without bothering to strip he lay back against the thin pillow, pressing the small book to his chest. 

Silver had asked Flint that day on the beach, if the men the gods split in half could live that way. He recalled his answer now with perfect clarity, the truth of it a dull ache somewhere beneath his ribs.

Not well.

  
  



	3. the pursuit of the whole is called love

The echoes of Flint’s life on Silver’s began to fade. Not disappear--they would never do that, Silver knew—but with distance they were reduced to the occasional shared experience.

The village emptied out. The chiefs left and took their men with them. The pirates, now sans either of their leaders, also left, returning to a Nassau that under Max’s leadership promised prosperity and little danger, unless sought. What once was a bustling hub for an oncoming war now had been returned to a small knot of regular people, living a life free—for the most part—from England’s reach.

Silver remained in Flint’s hut. He moved the few belongings he had out of Madi’s, his books mixing with Flint’s on the shelf in a sort of painful reminder of how their lives would not. Every day he slowly made his way to the cliffs on the beach where he and Flint had spent time training and he would sit, watch the waves roll in one after another, unending and relentless. He breathed in the salt sharp air and dug his fingers into the sand and tried not to wonder what Flint was doing at that moment.

In the evening he went back to the village and he made a point of seeing Madi in some way. He didn’t speak, didn’t push, but he let her know he was there.

Waiting.

One day, Madi didn’t wait for Silver to seek her out. Instead, she found him while he was at the beach.

She didn’t speak. He couldn’t, waiting, yards a way, the distance to him seeming insurmountable despite the fact that it was the closest they had been since he came back from Savannah. The expression on her face was conflicted, the brow that he longed to press his lips to furrowed as she looked at him, and he worried that she had come all the way out here only to tell him to leave her island once and for all.

Instead she held out her hand to him. “Come,” she requested.

He didn’t hesitate, immediately closing the distance between them in order to grasp her small hand in his own. She smiled at him, small and pained, but she leaned forward, pressing her brow to his cheekbone. “Come,” she whispered again.

Together, they went back to the village.

That night he lay with her in her bed. They didn’t make love. Instead they held each other close, quiet and somber. Madi wrapped her arms tight around his shoulders as he pressed soft, gentle kisses along that brow, on her cheek, the side of her nose, her jaw, until she tilted her chin up and sealed her mouth to his.

It wasn’t forgiveness, but it was close enough.

* * *

It got easier after that. Madi smiled at him again, the anger slowly bleeding from her face. He once again had her low laugh in his ear at night, her smooth skin under his palm. He was brought back into the concerns of the village, allowed into meetings with Madi and her mother as they took care of the day to day concerns and troubles of their people. Their treaty with Nassau meant they had arranged a steady supply line for their people and this required a constant account of the stocks and rations. They also had an almost daily review of what was needed as they put together a plan to sustain themselves without the help of Mr. Scott or the pirates, should the supply line stop.

The queen handled this all with the ease of someone long used to it. It became apparent to Silver, however, that Madi was growing restless. The young woman who had been raised to lead in a time fraught with uncertainty, who had organized and led the beginnings of a revolution did not know what to do with herself now that there was no revolt to lead.

Being the cause of her discontent, Silver was at a loss on how to help her. Still, they could be happy, sometimes. He could make them happy. He read aloud to her from the books he had moved into their hut, he worked side by side with her for the good of her people, held her close at night.

They could be happy. They could be enough for one another.

And yet, once, when Silver read a particular passage from a book, Madi’s face grew tight with sorrow, a flicker of anger running across her features. Flint, she told him, had quoted it to her once. She said no more on the subject, and he put the book away.

Flint’s absence was an open wound between them.

Any line of conversation that drew close to him as the subject and her eyes grew shadowed. Sometimes she would stay quiet, staring into the fire or out into the jungle around them. The distance between them at those times felt cavernous, and Silver’s only choice was to let her be until she drew herself out of her own thoughts. Worse were the times she turned to him, her eyes thoughtful as she studied him, the shape of her mouth a flat, uncertain line.

 _Do you still doubt me?_ He wanted to ask. _Do you still believe me the villain who could murder his own Fated in cold blood?_

He didn’t ask the question, afraid of the answer.

Silver had his own problem letting go. Every morning he would get up and head down to the beach—a ritual, a penance maybe, that he was unable to give up.

One morning Madi watched him dress from their bed, her lids still sleep heavy as he tied his hair back from his face and put on his boot.

“You could go to him,” she suggested, breaking the silence they had on the subject. Silver’s back muscles tensed. “Find him and Thomas and bring them back,” she continued. “The war is over. It is done. Not even Flint could rouse it from the dead now. You saw to that.”

Silver felt an unhappy smile twist his lips. “I think you are underestimating what Jame Flint can do when he puts his mind to it,” he told her mildly. He grabbed his crutch, back still to her. “Besides, Flint would not want to come back. He would not want to see me again.”

He started toward the door.

“You do not know that,” Madi insisted behind him.

He paused in the doorway. His smile this time, aimed at the direction of the beach, was small, and sad. “Yes, I do.”

He left.

* * *

When the queen ordered shackles put on the wrists of the first escaped slave who found their island, Madi looked over her mother’s shoulder at the man and her face was tight with pain and despair. Silver held his breath as that wretched gaze rose from the man on his knees before them to where Silver stood on the other side of the room, and he felt keenly every accusation she held back behind the repressed line of her lips. Without a word, she spun on her heel, turning her back on the whole room as she marched out the door.

A shadow of that same pain was on the Queen’s face as she watched her daughter’s retreating back, but Silver didn’t pause to offer words of comfort or support. He went after Madi.

He found her at the edge of the lake, her back to the village, hands clenched tightly at her side. Her eyes were wet with unshed tears when he reached her, and he could see the muscles in her jaw flex as she clenched it tight.

“You did this,” she told him. “Your plan, your _treaty_.” She spat the word, then took a breath, slow and controlled “You have made me a part of the very system that enslaved us to begin with.”

Her words were definite, damning, and would allow for no argument.

Silver did not offer one.

“I did.” He shifted his hold on his crutch, moved so he too looked out across the lake. “I have seen war up close, far more closely than I would like to again. And I could see no way for it to end with all of us alive. So yes, to save your life, I made you a part of it. I did that to you.”

When he looked back at Madi the tears in her eyes had crested, spilling down one cheek to pool at the line of her jaw.

“You don’t have to stay here,” he told her softly. “We could leave, go far away. Start a new life.”

Her eyes flickered to his. “Go? Where would we go?”

Silver stepped closer, one hand reaching up to graze her jaw, collecting the tears on the back of his fingers. “Anywhere,” he murmured. “France. Italy. We could go north, stop off in one of the colonies, gather supplies and strike out west in the new world. We could sail below the equator and explore the jungles that wait for us there, find new places beyond England’s reach.”

She closed her eyes with a sigh, leaned her face into his hand. A moment later her eyes opened, and she pulled away.

“That’s what you do, isn’t it?” She asked. “You live in one place, one life, long enough to ruin it for yourself and then you move on. You are so afraid of being trapped you will never let yourself do anything else. How many old lives, old names, have you left behind so you could start fresh?” She shook her head, her steps taking her backwards away from him. “I cannot live like that.”

Silver reached for her, but she was swift as she stepped out of his reach, turning her back to him and walking away. His hand, still damp from her tears, closed on empty air.

* * *

Sometimes grief does not rage, Silver learns.

Sometimes, you sit at the edge of a lake and grief pulls you down, like a rope tangled around your leg, dragging you deeper and deeper into its depths. It makes you cold. It makes you scared. It settles deep within you and shows you the bad things of your life until you are left gasping for air, each desperate pull of your lungs more painful than the other.

He let it take him over. Long John Silver, the legend, the god, was gone. He became nothing more than a crumpled, pathetic form on the ground, too lost to his own grief and regret to be anything else.

When the tide receded he lay back on the ground, exhausted. Despite the cool night air on his skin, Silver was warm. He could feel the weight of heavy blankets around him, the heat from a banked fire against his face.

Silver stayed like that the rest of the night, staring at the stars above him, feeling the phantom rise and fall of another chest against his own, and thought of the people he loved.

* * *

Madi’s footsteps were soft as they approached him on the ramp leading to the platform overlooking the village center. He was perched on the edge, arms braced on railing, legs and one foot dangling over the side. Below him the village was quiet, most people having returned to their homes by now, the setting sun letting them know it was time to relax, to eat and rest and spend time with their loved ones.

The fabric of Madi’s skirt made a soft rustling noise as she settled down beside him, swinging her legs over the edge next to his. It fell across his thigh and he wrapped it around his hand, rubbing the material between his fingers.

“I’ve thought about what you said.” He turned his head to look over at her curiously. “I think it is time I left the island.”

 _I._ Not _we._

He had expected it, after their conversation at the lake all those weeks ago, but even so, the pain those words caused felt like a blow to the stomach, knocking the breath from him.

“Where will you go?” he rasped out.

“I am not sure. I may travel for a while. I have been locked away here nearly all my life. Outside of this place and Providence Island, I have seen nothing of the world. I can board the next supply ship heading back to Nassau, and from there, who knows.” Her eyes were far away as she spoke, her face serene. Whatever this decision had cost her, Silver realized, she was at peace with it.

“Will you let me know where you end up?” It was a struggle to keep the desperate, pleading note out of his voice and when she turned to him, eyes kind, he knew he had failed.

She scooted closer to him, tucking herself easily against his side and leaning her forehead against his, closing her eyes. “Of course,” she breathed against his lips.

“But you won’t let me go with you.”

Minutely, she shook her head. Her palm reached up to cradle his cheek, fingers lovingly caressing his cheekbone, the edge of his brow. “I cannot be your life,” she told him softly, “but you are always welcome in mine.”

She pressed her lips to his, once, twice and then drew back.

“Besides,” she rifled through the pocket of her skirt, pulling out a folded, travel-worn letter. “I think you have somewhere else you need to go first.” She pressed it into his hands, along with a warm kiss to the side of his forehead, and stood up.

 _Madi Scott_ was written on the front of the letter in bold, thick strokes. Silver’s breath caught at the familiar writing. “Is this—?” His heart pounded. He couldn’t speak the words.

Above him, Madi didn’t force him to, confirming it without waiting for him to finish the thought. “It came on the last supply ship. He had sent it to Max, knowing she would see that it got to me. Check the back,” she instructed him.

It was with clumsy fingers that he turned the letter over. There, on the back above the broken seal, was a return address.

“He’s no longer at the plantation,” she told him. “Hasn’t been there for a long time.”

“No,” Silver muttered distractedly. He ran his thumb over the address, feeling the impression the words made on the thick paper. “No, I knew that.”

“How did you know?”

Silver let his mouth curl into a half smile. “Because,” he replied. “I can taste salt.”

* * *

The great and monstrous Captain Flint, a fisherman.

Silver amused himself by imagining how, exactly, the superstitious pirates who had whispered Flint’s name, furtive and frightened, like just speaking it would summon the man from the depths of the ocean and bring a tempest with him, would react to the man now. If they would even believe it.

The ship that came in with the dusk was a small one—more of a boat, really—and it didn’t take long for Silver to pick Flint out from his spot at the docks. He moved with the grace of someone who had lived his life at sea, hopping down over the side to quickly secure the ship. Silver watched his hands as they easily made the knot and felt the rough fibers of the rope against his own palms. Someone from the ship called out to Flint as he finished and he looked up, his smile sharp and amused.

Silver sucked in a breath at the sight. Flint had grown out his hair, had it pulled firmly back from his face and tied with cord. It was longer than it had been when Silver first met him in Nassau, but even so Flint’s profile as he looked up at the ship was so familiar that he felt his stomach twist and flip with recognition.

Maybe Flint heard the gasp, or maybe he felt it, but Silver watched him still. Slowly, he turned his head to look over his shoulder, locking his eyes unerringly on where Silver was standing yards away. A brief flicker of shock ran across his face before it locked down, expressionless, and Silver cursed Flint and his ability to hide his every emotion.

There was a time, once, when Flint never bothered to hide them around Silver.

Flint glanced quickly up at his shipmates before turning back to Silver, shooting him a firm glare and a nod at the ground, a silent order to stay away. Silver had no intention of disobeying. He was content to wait, to linger below the ledge of one of the squat buildings that surrounded the docks and watch as Flint worked, to feel the burn of that work in his own muscles as he did.

Dusk had long faded into night by the time Flint was done. After that first, brief acknowledgement, he hadn’t looked back in Silver’s direction, continuing to work as if he wasn’t there, but Silver knew the set of his shoulders meant he was anything but relaxed, felt the echo of the tension in his own. Now, Silver could feel nothing but the rise in his own pulse as Flint finally turned his way, walking up the dock to where Silver had been lurking and stopping several feet in front of him, just out of reach.

They studied each other in the dim light. Gone were the pirate adornments of Captain Flint--the pistols, the earring, the long, dark coat. Instead he was dressed in the rough, hardy clothes that suited a fisherman in a cold climate. The beard remained but his face had changed slightly: filled out, softening the cut of his cheekbones and the hollows of his eyes into something altogether less severe. The line between his eyes as he took Silver in was the same as it ever was, though, and Silver’s hands nearly itched with the desire to reach out and smooth it with his fingertips.

He wondered what Flint saw when he looked at him.

“Captain,” he greeted and watched Flint’s brows rise in dark irony at the word.

“Mr. Silver.” His tone had no inflection. It wasn't welcome nor a warning, just a flat acknowledgement and the expectation that an explanation of his presence would be forthcoming.

Silver’s eyes flickered beyond the man’s shoulders, taking in the crowd of people still bustling around them. “I have a room at the inn nearby. Perhaps we could sit down and talk?”

Flint was quiet for a moment, eyeing him thoughtfully, and Silver knew he was weighing the benefits of agreeing and being able to talk somewhere private and refusing and so forcing Silver into a much more public confrontation. Silver swallowed down the panic he could feel crawling up his throat at the thought that Flint would refuse but finally, Flint nodded.

No words were spoken between them as they walked to the inn, but they fell naturally into their old rhythm. Flint's pace automatically slowed so that they walked side by side, same as they did when they were two kings on an island, leading men into an unwinnable war. Silver could almost imagine them back there, could feel the warm breeze coming off the sea instead of the cold bite of the Massachusetts wind through his thin coat. In his mind, the looks they drew as the two of them walked down the street were not the blatant curiosity and pity the sight of him on his crutch usually garnered, but ones of fear and awe, respect and anticipation.

Silver had been feeling that those days were so long ago, but now, with Flint’s shoulder once again just a hands breadth away from his, they seemed like just yesterday.

The innkeeper scowled when she saw them enter, the expression on her face not relaxing even when they bypassed the tables and made their way to the stairs leading to the rooms above.

“I had to ask her if she knew you and what ship you were on when I got here, and apparently she doesn't like you," Silver told Flint with a small smile as they climbed. "Something about being a rabble-rouser and getting the local lads riled up about revolting against England. You seem to develop quite the reputation no matter where you go.”

Flint didn’t comment. He followed Silver quietly into the rented room, closing the door behind him and slouching against it, arms crossed. “I assume Madi told you where to find me.”

“Did you expect her not to?” Silver asked lightly as leaned his crutch against the bed. There was a fire already roaring in the fireplace, so at least the innkeeper's dislike didn't cause any neglect of hospitality.

“I didn’t expect you to care to know,” Flint replied flatly and Silver almost flinched at the words. When he looked over his shoulder at the man the look of anger he expected wasn’t there, just a thoughtful, almost wary expression on his face as Flint watched him.

Silver let out a tired sigh and slumped down on the foot of the bed. “It was never about not caring. You have to know that, at least.”

The silence was heavy between them. “Alright, then,” Flint finally said. “Let’s say I know that.” He walked slowly to the center of the room as he spoke, his arms and shoulders losing their defensive posture as he stood directly across from Silver. “Tell me what this is about then. Why are you here?”

Silver stared at him. Worried his lip. Rubbed at the ache in his right leg.

He’d had months, years actually, to plan what he wanted to say to this man once he saw again— _if_ he saw him again—and now that he was here, looking up at his expectant face he found that he was at a loss for words.

The legendary Long John Silver, with nothing to say.

Flint let out an irritated breath and shook his head, beginning to turn away.

“I’m sorry.” The words were out of his mouth before Silver even thought about them, leaping from his throat in a desperate attempt to keep Flint here, with him.

It worked. Flint paused and turned back around, brows raising as a look of surprise and yes, there it was, the beginnings of rage built on his face.

“You’re… sorry,” he drawled. “For what exactly? For using what I told you about Thomas as a way to betray my trust? For destroying everything we had fought and sacrificed for? For denying Madi the chance to take back the freedom England stole from her people?” Each word from Flint’s mouth was clipped, tight with repressed emotion. “Or for leaving me to rot in that fucking slave plantation?”

Silver shook his head. “No, I’m not sorry for that. I _can’t_ be sorry for that. You’re alive. Madi’s alive. And you are here, with Thomas. I cannot regret any action that led to that outcome. It is a far better one than what I feared was coming.”

“Then what _do_ you regret?” His words were calm, but Silver could feel the rush of his pulse echoing his own. Could feel the light touch of a thumb against his right pinky finger, restlessly tracing the line where a heavy ring used be.

“I thought it would be enough,” Silver confessed, voice hushed. “Your partnership. Your friendship. I _told_ myself it would be enough. Anything else was too much, too… restricting.” He dragged his gaze from where it had been staring vacantly at Flint’s hand and back up to his surprised face. “I never wanted this, to be Fated. My parents were, you know. And after my father died, my mother, she couldn’t —” he cleared his throat, shook his head. “I thought keeping you alive, maybe even happy, again, with Thomas, would be enough. That I could live with that. It would hurt,” he let out a raw, bitter laugh. “Like losing a limb, but I could live with it.”

Flint eyed him doubtfully. “And now you find you can’t live with it after all.”

“No,” Silver denied, “that’s not it. If you were to walk out of here, to tell me to leave you and Thomas be, then I will go. First thing tomorrow. And I will live with the pain of it. You know intimately, after all, the amount of pain a man can experience and keep on living.” He took a deep breath, and it shook as he released it from his chest. “But I don’t want to.”

Flint said nothing, brows furrowed, jaw ticking as he thought.

Silver had to clench his hands to keep them from shaking. As the silence lengthened between them he thought how this was the opposite of that day on the island--Flint standing before him, Silver sitting, a breath away from pleading with him. They once again stood on the precipice of great change between them, a moment of bending or breaking, but Flint didn’t have to hold a pistol at Silver’s chest. All he had to do was turn and take those few short steps to the door and Silver would be ruined, a wreck at the bottom of an unforgiving sea, despite what he told Flint about living with it. All Flint had to do was walk away.

Flint moved. One step. Three. Then he was on his knees in front of Silver, one hand tangling his fingers in his hair like they belonged there, grasping the back of his neck in order to pull him down into a kiss.

“You _selfish_ —” Flint growled into his lips, his thumb tracing the line of his throat up to his jaw. “— _cowardly_ —” he pressed the words roughly into his skin, twisting his fingers in his hair to pull him closer, closer.

“ _Yes,_ ” Silver agreed feverishly, his own hands grabbing at Flint’s shoulders, his neck, his cheek, as he kissed him back. “Yes. I’m all that and I’m _sorry_. I’m—” Flint deepened this kiss, stopping the words. They clung to each other, crouched awkwardly at the foot of the bed, shifting ever closer until they finally had to pull apart, gasping. Silver leaned his forehead against Flint’s and his eyes closed as he felt the puffs of air Flint breathed against his skin. “I should have let us have this,” he whispered. “From the start.”

Flint chuckled, and Silver opened his eyes to see Flint smiling fondly at him, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “Well, I don’t know about the start,” he told him. “If you had come to me and suggested this at the beginning of our acquaintance I would have thrown you overboard, Fated or not.”

Silver laughed. “I wouldn’t be too sure about that. I didn’t know until you nearly drowned in Division Bay. We weren’t exactly friends then and I still ended up pulling your sorry ass out of the water.”

“You were also an opportunistic little shit who knew he would be facing an angry, mutinous crew all alone if I died.”

He grinned. “Well, there was that, yes.”

Flint pulled him down for another kiss in response. This one was soft, a slow, rhythmic press of lips against lips. Flint’s palm skated across his cheek, and he curled his fingers gently over the shell of his ear. Silver shuddered into it, one arm snaking down and around Flint’s back in order to pull him up in between his legs, against his chest. Flint took it further, pushing Silver back against the bed and crawling on after him, settling against him with a sigh before sealing their mouths together again.

Silver had thought about this before, of course he had, but when he had considered it he wondered at how the echoing senses between them would work. He expected to feel the grip of his own hand on his biceps, that when he dragged his teeth across Flint’s bottom lip it was his that would feel the sting of it. Instead there was nothing. It was like now that they were here, as tight and close as they could get, the bond between them was satisfied, like the lingering ache of a hunger Silver hadn’t even known was there was finally sated.

Silver pulled Flint’s hair loose, running his fingers through it in the way he imagined doing years ago. He gripped a handful of it, pulling it back in a light tug. Above him Flint groaned, rocking his hips against Silver’s. A hot spike of desire twisted up his spine at the action and Silver gasped, bucking his hips to meet him.

“Captain,” he rasped. Flint shook his head, even as he pressed a line of hot, open mouthed kisses up his throat, not stopping until he reached his ear.

“ _James,_ ” he rumbled against it. “Call me James.”

“James,” Silver agreed. He tugged at the collar of Flint’s shirt. Suddenly, the thin barrier between them was too much, he needed to feel Flint’s skin against his own. “Off. Now. _Please._ ”

He felt Flint nod against his face and then suddenly he was pulling away, sitting back on his knees so he could tug the bottom of his shirt from his trousers and slip it over his head. Silver paused in the action of taking off his own shirt, caught by the line of Flint’s shoulders in the dim light from the fire, by the dip of his collarbone. There was a smattering of reddish brown hair against his chest and Silver pushed himself up so he could run his fingers through it, nipping up his chest and mouthing at his collar bone.

Flint huffed, pushed him far enough away that he could rip Silver’s forgotten shirt over his head. He placed one hand on Silver’s shoulder, intending to push him back down onto the bed, but Silver had other plans. He curled his arm around Flint’s ribs and flipped them so that Flint was on his back, immediately leaning down to press his mouth to the hollow of his throat, run the palms of his hands down his chest.

He remembered suddenly, sharing quarters with the captain as he recovered from his leg, watching Flint change from the corner of his eye, caught nearly breathless with want even as he denied it to himself.

Silver didn’t deny himself now. He ran his fingertips over the curve of Flint’s biceps, down the side of his ribs. His mouth and hands found every scar on his torso, the faded edge of one below his navel, the line across his chest from Singleton’s sword, the thick jagged remnants of a bullet wound that Silver’s own hands had bandaged. He placed a soft, lingering kiss there and Flint gasped, shuddering under his mouth, his hands.

“ _John_ ,” he pleaded, tugging him up, and Silver acquiesced. Their mouths met in a gasp, open and slick. Flint’s hand was hot against the back of his neck as he held them there, his other hand sliding down between them to slip beneath the waistband of his trousers. Silver moaned as that hand circled him and panted against Flint’s mouth as he rocked into his fist.

“Yes,” Flint muttered. “Like that.” His gaze was locked on Silver's face as he thrust, expression rapt. His thumb circled the tip of his cock, gathering the slick there and smearing it down his shaft, eyes hot as Silver gasped and shook above him.

Abruptly, Silver pulled back, knocking Flint's hand away so he could scramble at the fastening of his trousers, shoving them and his boot off. He then tugged at Flint's waistband, encouraging him to lift his hips and remove the remainder of his clothes too. Once they were both naked he shoved Flint back on to the bed and wasted no time stretching out on top of him, tangling their legs together and pressing chest against chest, reveling in the feel of Flint's skin against his.

"No," Silver whispered against Flint's ear as he rocked their hips together "like _this._ "

Flint groaned and wrapped his arms around Silver, one hand reaching down to grasp at his hip and pull him tighter against him. Silver watched him suck in a breath at the sensation, head tipping back as he closed his eyes.

They stayed like that, locked tight together, rocking as one being like a ship on the ocean, a rhythm that was so familiar, so right to Silver that it left him trembling. He stared, wide eyed, into Flint’s equally amazed gaze, breathed his name into the air between them and when their release finally tumbled over them like a wave, it felt to Silver like coming home.

It felt like Fate.

Afterwards, they lay tangled together in the sheets, no room for space between them on the small bed, no desire for any. The fire was getting low in its grate, and the November chill was creeping into the room, but Silver was loath to get up, to peel himself away from Flint in order to tend to it. Flint seemed of the same mind, face tucked against Silver’s chest, his expression content as he absently wound a curl from Silver’s hair around his fingers.

“So I take it you accept my apology then,” Silver broke the companionable silence with, because he was, as Flint said, a shit, and because he needed to know where they were going from here.

Flint shot him a glance that was both irritated and amused. “You really can’t leave well enough alone, can you? Yes,” he said before Silver could retort. “I suppose I accept it.”

Silver felt that last knot of worry ease inside him. “Good." He smoothed his down Flint's back, lingering on the rough skin of another scar. "Now, what’s next?”

Flint sighed, shifting just a fraction away. “Next, I go home.”

“Oh,” Silver muttered. He had forgotten. Yes, Flint would need to go home. They were back in civilization after all, and the nosy innkeeper would likely notice if Flint stayed all night in Silver’s room. Besides, Thomas would be expecting him. He was probably wondering where he was right now, in fact. Fishing ships were known to get in late sometimes, but not this late.

It wasn’t jealousy he felt at the thought. He _wasn’t_ jealous. No more, he knew, than Flint was at Madi. But still, disappointment set heavy in his chest as he thought about watching Flint get up and leave, of finishing this night alone.

Flint looked up at his face at the small exclamation, eyes shrewd. “He wants to meet you, you know,” Flint told him and Silver looked at him in surprise. “Eager to, even.”

Silver felt both warm and nervous at the thought. Flint had talked about him, and it couldn’t have been all bad, if Flint was telling the truth. Still, a part of him worried at what a man as good as Flint said Thomas was would think of someone like Silver. Would he, without knowing Silver, be able to understand, to forgive the actions it took to bring Flint and Thomas together again?

“Of course,” Flint drawled out, cutting through Silver's grim thoughts, “even eager as he is, he wouldn’t forgive me if I didn’t give him _some_ warning.”

Silver’s mouth lifted in a small grin. “Of course.”

Flint leaned up to capture that grin with his lips. “Come to the house tomorrow,” he softly demanded against Silver’s skin. “Meet the man you brought back from the dead for me.”

Silver let out a sigh and brought one hand up to rest in the curve of where Flint’s neck met his shoulder, his thumb gently tracing a curve against his throat. “Of course,” he said again.

Flint built up the fire again when he got up, and Silver watched him dress in the firelight with sleepy, contented eyes. After they shared one last, lingering kiss, Flint’s hands curling once more in Silver’s hair like he couldn’t stay away from it, he left, closing the door quietly behind him. Moments later Silver felt a blast of cold against his own face as Flint stepped outside, but it didn’t bother him. He felt sated, tired in a way that had nothing to do with the constant weight of loss that he had been carrying with him for years, and he slipped easily into sleep.

* * *

Silver dithered before the front door of the small, two story house that was Flint and Thomas’s home. He had been impatient all day, pacing the floor of his rented room, fidgeting at the bar of the inn until the innkeeper glared so balefully at him he was finally forced to give up the stool and head outside, restlessly walking the streets of Boston until dusk finally creeped in. Now, Silver finally stood at the address Madi had pressed into his hands, at the little house with its thin, but well tended shutters, the lamp light from inside bleeding out from edges, and he was almost too nervous to knock on the door.

It opened before he got the chance to.

“Why are you just lingering out—oh.” The man who looked at him in surprise from the doorway was tall, with short, greying blond hair and a neatly trimmed beard. A pair of wire glasses were perched on his nose.

Silver smiled awkwardly at him. “Hello.”

The man blinked, and the surprise fell from his expression and was replaced with a welcoming smile. “You must be Mr. Silver.” He opened the door wider stepping aside. “Come in. Sorry about that, I thought you were James, he hasn’t returned yet.”

Silver did as he was bid, stepping into a small, but well lit parlor. There was a strong fire in the grate, two chairs placed close on either side, one of which had a book upside down on the armrest, cup of tea on the table beside it.

The other man caught where his gaze went and smiled, apologetically. “James told me to expect you, but I’m afraid I lost track of time.” He took off the glasses and went to the chair, picking up the book. Silver studied Thomas as he marked his page with a ribbon and placed it on the table by his tea, glasses carefully set down on top. Years of hard work and trouble had roughened his hands, had made lines around his eyes and mouth, but he was still every much the gentleman James described him as.

He had thought, when he met Thomas, that the man would seem familiar somehow. After all that Flint talked of him, once Silver was able to get him to, it was somewhat of a surprise to be reminded that he was, after all, a stranger. Was Thomas feeling the same way about him?

“I’m sorry James isn’t here,” Thomas said. “He usually is by now, but the catch has been good these last few weeks and the owners have been keeping them out later and starting early to take advantage of it.”

“He should be here soon,” Silver told him mildly. “He’s off the ship by now.”

The surprise was back on Thomas’s face again, and for one terrible moment Silver feared that Flint had never told him, who he was, _what_ he was to Flint, but then his expression smoothed out and he gave a short laugh. “Of course.”

Silver nearly jerked at the sound. He knew that laugh. Soft, and warm--he’d heard it before, over his shoulder only to turn around and find no one there, breathed intimately against his ear late at night, again and again. Years ago, before Silver had even known who his Fated was.

So. A stranger then, yes, but not wholly unfamiliar.

“In that case,” Thomas continued. “I think I will make some tea. He likes a cup when he gets home. Would you like one?” When Silver nodded his assent he started toward a doorway Silver assumed led to the kitchen, but before Thomas went through it, he paused.

When he turned back around to face Silver again, his expression was serious, the genial, hospitable smile gone from his mouth. "Actually, while we are alone—" Silver tensed in trepidation of what he was going to say. "—I wanted to thank you."

Silver's mouth opened slightly in surprise.

"Not just for finding me and bringing us back together," Thomas continued "though I am grateful and so is James, even if he'll never admit it." Thomas took a step forward, face earnest. "But for… being there. For taking care of him when I could not. James has told me some of what happened all these years we were apart and it's apparent that had it not been for you in his life, he wouldn't be here today. He would have been lost, many times over—another pirate with nothing to lose, taken to the depths of the sea."

Silver licked his lips, mouth suddenly dry. "I…I’m not sure that's true."

Thomas regarded him seriously. "James says it is."

The soft words fell on Silver like a blow, and he rocked back, breathing hard. He didn't know what to say to that. He couldn't accept Thomas's thanks, not when despite all his denial, he had needed Flint just as much, not when every action he took had been selfishly motivated. "I—" he finally rasped out. "I couldn't do anything else."

Thomas looked at him with knowing eyes. "Now _that's_ not true," he countered. "After all, we always have a choice in life do we not? No matter what hand Fate has dealt us."

He took pity on Silver after that. “I’ll start on that tea. Please, make yourself comfortable” He gestured broadly around the parlor before ducking through the doorway and into the kitchen.

Once he was alone, Silver took a deep breath, looking around the room as a way to steady himself. The furnishings weren’t luxurious, as Silver imagined Thomas was once used to, but they were comfortable, and put together with a careful hand. It reminded him, actually, of the house Flint had shared with Mrs. Barlow on Providence Island. He imagined the two men taking the time to pick out and purchase things she would like, keeping her a part of their lives even now. The bookshelves that lined the wall, he knew, would please all three of them, and he ran his finger along the edge of a shelf as he browsed the titles, smiling at the volumes that were matches for the ones he had back on the Maroon island.

It was the two books on the mantle that caught his eye, however. The red one he recognized immediately, knowing it to be an exact replica of _Meditations_ that Flint had carried around with him all those years. The smaller one however, peaked his interest, and he reached out to pull it down, breath catching in his throat as he read the title.

_The Symposium._

It wasn’t the same edition as the one Silver kept, but it was the same book nonetheless. A thin ribbon marked a page inside it and Silver opened up to it, eyes falling on two passages that had been underlined with a firm hand.

Silver didn't need to read one of them. He knew it—could close his eyes and recite it word for word.

_And when one of them meets with his other half, the actual half of himself, whether he be a lover of youth or a lover of another sort, the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy, and would not be out of the other’s sight, as I may say, even for a moment: these are the people who pass their whole lives together; yet they could not explain what they desire of one another._

It was the other, shorter passage that drew his eye, marked some paragraphs above the other. The words were underlined, ink just slightly smeared as if someone had run their fingers over them, again and again.

_And so, love is born into every human being; it calls back the halves of our original nature together; it tries to make one out of two and heal the wound of human nature._

With careful fingers, Silver closed the book, smoothing his hand over the leather. He knew, without a doubt, that Flint could feel the cool touch of it against his own palm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I didn't much care for the idea of soulmates in the Black Sails fandom, simply because it went against the whole polyamory theme in the show, but then I read robotboy's absolutely beautiful [ Ships in the Night](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15986876/chapters/37295444) and it really got me thinking about it. I wanted to write a story where if a person has a soulmate, they only have one, and yet poly relationships still worked. I also wanted to focus on Silver and how having Flint as a soulmate would motivate him through the show. Originally it was supposed to end in Savannah, after Flint reveals that he knew they were Fated and they part anyway, but I found I had to write them a happier ending. 
> 
> [Come say hi on my tumblr!](https://aisalynn.tumblr.com/)


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